After the death of Queen Elizabeth and the respite from the Anglo-Spanish naval fighting there was little employment for those hundreds of our countrymen who had taken to the sea during the time of Drake. Fighting the Spaniards or lying in wait for treasure ships bound from the West Indies to Cadiz was just the life that appealed to them. But now that these hostilities had passed, they felt that their means of livelihood were gone. After the exciting sea life with Drake and others, after the prolonged Armada-fighting, it would be too tame for them to settle down to life ashore. Fishing was not very profitable, and there was not sufficient demand for all the men to ship on board merchant ships.

So numbers of these English seamen unfortunately took to piracy. Some of them, it would be more truthful to say, resumed piracy and found their occupation haunting the English Channel, the Scillies being a notorious nest for pirates. Notwithstanding the number of these robbers of the sea who were always on the look out, yet, says our friend Smith of Virginia, “it is incredible how many great and rich prizes the little barques of the West Country daily brought home, in regard of their small charge.”

But the strenuous measures which were being now taken in the narrow seas by the North European governments made piracy in this district less remunerative than hitherto. In the Mediterranean these unemployed seamen knew that piracy was a much better paid industry. They knew that the Moors would be glad to avail themselves of the services of such experienced seamen, so they betook themselves to Barbary. At first, be it remembered, these Englishmen had established themselves as North African pirates “on their own” without any connection with the Moors. Smith mentions that Ward, “a poore English sailor,” and Dansker, a Dutchman, here began some time before the Moors scarcely knew how to sail a ship. An Englishman named Easton made such a profit that he became, says Smith, a “Marquesse in Savoy,” and Ward “lived like a Bashaw in Barbary.” From these men the Moors learnt how to become good sea-fighters. Besides Englishmen there came also French and Dutch adventurers to join them, attracted by this mode of life, but very few Spaniards or Italians ever joined their throng. After a time, however, disagreements arose and the inevitable dissensions followed.

They then became so split up and disunited that the Moors and Turks began to obtain the upper hand over them and to compel them to be their slaves. Furthermore, they made these expert European sailors teach themselves how to become distinguished in the nautical arts. This “many an accursed runnagado, or Christian turned Turke, did, till they have made those Sally men, or Moores of Barbary, so powerfull as they be, to the terror of all the Straights.” Other English pirates hovered about off the Irish coasts, and three men, named respectively Gennings, Harris and Thompson, in addition to some others, were captured and hanged at Wapping. A number of others were captured and pardoned by James I.

A contemporary account of rowing in a Barbarian galley in the time of Elizabeth has been preserved to us, written by one Thomas Sanders. “I and sixe more of my fellowes,” he writes, “together with fourescore Italians and Spaniards were sent foorth in a Galeot to take a Greekish Carmosell, which came into Africa to steale Negroes, and went out of Tripolis unto that place, which was two hundred and fourtie leagues thence, but wee were chained three and three to an oare, and wee rowed naked above the girdle, and the Boteswaine of the Galley walked abaft the maste, and his Mate afore the maste ... and when their develish choller rose, they would strike the Christians for no cause. And they allowed us but halfe a pound of bread a man in a day without any other kinde of sustenance, water excepted ... we were then also cruelly manackled in such sort, that we could not put our hands the length of one foote asunder the one from the other, and every night they searched our chaines three times, to see if they were fast riveted.”

And the same man related the unhappy experience of a Venetian and seventeen captives who, after enduring slavery for some time at the hands of the Sultan of Tripoli, succeeded in getting a boat and got right away to sea. Away they sped to the northward, and at length they sighted Malta. Their hopes ran high: their confidence was now undoubted. On they came, nearer and nearer to the land, and now they were within only a mile of the shore. It was beautifully fine weather, and one of them remarked, “In dispetto de Dio adesso venio a pittiar terra”—“In the despite of God I shall now fetch the shoare.” But the man had spoken with an excess of confidence. For presently a violent storm sprang up, so that they were forced to up-helm and to run right before the gale, which was now blowing right on to the Tripolitan coast. Arrived off there they were heart-broken to find that they were compelled to row up and down the very coastline which they had imagined they had escaped from. For three weeks they held out as best they could, but the weather being absolutely against them, and their slender victuals being at length exhausted, they were compelled to come ashore, hoping to be able to steal some sheep. The Barbarian Moores, however, were on the watch and knew that these unlucky men would be bound to land for supplies. Therefore a band of sixty horsemen were dispatched who secreted themselves behind a sandhill near the sea. There they waited till the Christians had got well inland a good half mile. Then, by a smart movement, the horsemen cut off all retreat to the sea, whilst others pursued the starving voyagers and soon came back with them. They were brought back to the place whence they had so recently escaped. The Sultan ordered that the fugitives should, some of them, have their ears cut off, whilst others were most cruelly thrashed.

The enterprising voyages of the English ships to the Levant in the sixteenth century had been grievously interfered with by the Algerine galleys roving about the Mediterranean, especially in proximity to the Straits of Gibraltar. They would set out from England with goods to deliver and then return with Mediterranean fruits and other commodities. But so often were these valuable ships and cargoes captured by the hateful infidels that the English merchants who had dispatched the goods became seriously at a loss and were compelled to invoke the aid of Elizabeth, who endeavoured, by means of diplomacy, to obtain the release of these ships and to prevent such awkward incidents recurring. To give the names of a few such ships, and to indicate the loss in regard to ships’ freights and of men held captive in slavery we have only to mention the following: The Salomon of Plymouth had been captured with a load of salt and a crew of thirty-six men. The Elizabeth of Guernsey was seized with ten Englishmen and a number of Bretons, her value being 2000 florins. The Maria Martin, under the command of Thomas More, with a crew of thirty-five, had been taken while returning from Patrasso in Morea. Her value was 1400 florins. The Elizabeth Stokes of London, under the command of David Fillie of London, whilst bound for Patrasso, had been also captured, but her value was 20,000 or 30,000 florins. The Nicolas of London, under the command of Thomas Foster, had also been seized, at a loss of about 5000 florins. So also in like manner could be mentioned the Judith of London, the Jesus of London, the Swallow of London.

But England, of course, was not the only country which suffered by these piratical acts. In 1617 France was moved to take serious action, and sent a fleet of fifty ships against these Barbarian corsairs. Off St. Tropez they captured one of these roving craft, and later on met another which was captured by a French renegado of Rochelle. The latter defended himself fiercely for some time, but at length, seeing that the day was going against him, he sunk his ship and was drowned, together with the whole of his crew, rather than be captured by the Christians. And from now onwards, right up to the nineteenth century, there were at different dates successive expeditions sent against these rovers by the chief European powers.

Many of these expeditions were of little value, some were practically useless, while others did only ephemeral good. Thus, you will remember, the only active service which the navy of our James I. ever saw was in 1620, when it was sent against the pirates of Algiers. But they had become so successful and so daring that they were not easily to be tackled. Not content now with roving over the Mediterranean, not satisfied with those occasional voyages out through the Gibraltar Straits into the Atlantic, they now, if you please, had the temerity to cross the Bay of Biscay and to cruise about the approaches of the English Channel. These Algerine pirates actually sailed as far north as the south of Ireland, where they acted just as they had for generations along the Mediterranean: that is to say, they landed on the Munster shore, committed frightful atrocities and carried away men, women and children into the harsh slavery which was so brutally enforced in their Barbarian territory. What good did the Jacobean expedition which we sent out, you may naturally ask? The answer may be given in the fewest words. Although the fleet contained six of our royal ships and a dozen merchantmen, yet it returned home with no practical benefit, the whole affair having been a hopeless muddle.

In 1655, Blake, the great admiral of Cromwell’s time, was sent to tackle these pirate pests. It was a big job, but there was no one at that time better suited for an occasion that required determination. Tunis was a very plague-spot by its piratical colony and its captives made slaves. It had to be humbled to the dust, and Blake, with all the austerity and thoroughness of a Puritan officer, was resolved to do his duty to Christendom. But Tunis was invulnerable, so it was a most difficult undertaking. He spent the early spring of this year cruising about the neighbourhood, biding his time and being put to great inconvenience by foul winds and tempestuous weather. He found that these Tunis pirates were obstinate and wilful: they were unprepared to listen to any reason. Intractable and insolent, it was impossible to treat with them: force was the only word to which they could be made to hearken. “These barbarous provocations,” wrote Blake in giving an account of his activities here, “did so far work upon our spirits that we judged it necessary, for the honour of the fleet, our nation and religion, seeing they would not deal with us as friends, to make them feel us as enemies”; and it was thereupon resolved, at a council of war, to endeavour the firing their ships in Porto Farina.

Tunis, itself, being invulnerable, Blake entered the neighbouring harbour, this Porto Farina, very early in the morning. The singular thing was that he was favoured with amazingly good luck—a fair wind in and a fair wind out. But let me tell the story in the Admiral’s own words: “Accordingly, the next morning very early, we entered with the fleet into the harbour, and anchored before their castles, the Lord being pleased to favour us with a gentle gale off the sea, which cast all the smoke upon them, and made our work the more easy. After some hours’ dispute we set on fire all their ships, which were in number nine; and, the same favourable gale still continuing, we retreated out again into the road. We had twenty-five men slain, and about forty besides hurt, with very little other loss. It was also remarkable by us that, shortly after our getting forth, the wind and weather changed, and continued very stormy for many days, so that we could not have effected the business, had not the Lord afforded that nick of time in which it was done.”

But these attacks by the powers were regarded by the pirates as mere pin-pricks. For it was nothing to them that even all their galleys should be burnt. Such craft were easily built again, and there was an overwhelming amount of slave-labour and plenty of captive seamen to rig these ships as soon as finished. So the evil continued and the epidemic spread as before. In 1658, these Barbarian corsairs attacked a ship called the Diamond, homeward bound from Lisbon to Venice. She was laden with a valuable cargo, and her captain saw that he would not be able to defend his ship against three galleys, so, rather than let her fall into piratical hands, he determined to destroy her. He placed an adequate quantity of powder, and then laying a match to the same, he jumped into his long-boat, from which presently he had the pleasure of seeing his enemies blown into space by the terrific explosion just as these infidels were in the act of boarding the Diamond.

Ten years later Sir Thomas Allen was sent during the summer with a squadron once more to repress Algerine piracy. He arrived before Algiers, and was so successful that he compelled the release of all the English captives which had been accumulating there. Indeed, it is amazing to count up so many of these expeditions from England alone. Thus, in the early spring of 1671, we find Sir Edward Spragge sent out to the Mediterranean for the same purpose. The following account is condensed from his own dispatch and is of no ordinary interest. On the 20th of April, Spragge was cruising in his flagship the Revenge, about fifteen or twenty miles off Algiers, when he met his other ships, the Mary, Hampshire, Portsmouth and the Advice, which were all frigates. These informed him that several Algerine war-craft were at Bougie. He called a council of war, at which it was agreed that Spragge should make the best of his way there with the Mary, the Portsmouth pink and his fireships, and he should endeavour to destroy these corsairs in their own lair. The Hampshire and the Portsmouth were left to cruise off Algiers till further orders should reach them.

The wind was now easterly, and one of his ships, named the Dragon, had been gone five days, as she was busy chasing a couple of Algerine corsair craft: but as the wind for some days had been from the south-west, Spragge was in hopes that the chase would have carried the ships to the eastward and thus force the Algerines into Bougie. And so, on the 23rd of April, the Dragon returned to Spragge, having been engaged for two days in fighting the two Algerine craft. Unfortunately her commander, Captain Herbert (whom the reader will remember by his later title when he became the Earl of Torrington), had been shot in the face by a musket shot, and nine of his men had also been wounded with small shot. The wind continued easterly until 28th April, but at eight o’clock that night it flew round to south-west and the weather became very gusty and rainy. This caused Spragge’s Little Eagle fireship to become disabled, and she was dismasted by the wind. But, on the last day of April, Spragge got her fitted with masts again and re-rigged, for luckily he had with him a corn ship captured from the corsairs, and her spars, together with some topmasts and other spars, caused the fireship to be ready again for service. Unfortunately the same bad weather caused the Warwick to spring her mast—an accident that frequently befell the ships of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—so she “bore away to the Christian shore: my Brigantine at the same time bore away, and as yet I have no news of her.”

The same day this admiral arrived in Bougie Bay, but here again he had bad luck. Just as he was within half a shot of the enemy’s castles and forts the wind dropped and it fell a flat calm. Then the breeze sprang up, but it blew off shore. So the time passed. On the 2nd of May the winds were still very fluky, and after twice in vain attempting to do anything with these varied puffs, Spragge resolved to attack by night with his ships’ boats and his smallest fireship. The water close to the forts was very shallow, and the English fireship could be rowed almost as well as a ship’s long-boat. So about midnight he dispatched all the boats he could, as well as the Eagle fireship, under the command of “my eldest Lieutenant, Master Nugent.” It was a dark night, and the high land was very useful for its obscuring effects.

Nugent, leaving one of the long-boats with the fireship, in addition to the fireship’s own boat, now rowed off to reconnoitre the enemy, having first given the fireship’s captain orders to continue approaching until he should find himself in shoal water: he was then immediately to anchor. Nugent had then rowed off and had scarcely left the fireship one minute when, after proceeding but a little way over the leaden waters, he found himself quite close to where the English squadron was anchored. He had thus lost his bearings in the dark and at once steered off again to find the fireship, when, to his great amazement, he suddenly saw the latter burst out into a sheet of flame. That, of course, was another piece of ill-luck, for it entirely upset all the carefully laid plans and instantly alarmed the enemy. It would have been useless to have attempted a boat attack that night, so the effort was postponed. What had happened was this: the little fireship had been all ready when, by an accident, the gunner had fired off his pistol. This had caused the ignition, and so the ship had been lost without any good being done. It was a thousand pities as, owing to her shallow draught, she had been relied upon for getting right close in.

With this warning the enemy the next day unrigged their ships, which lay in their harbour, then gathered together all the yards, the topmasts and spars generally off these ships, together with their cables. All this they made into a boom, which was buoyed up by means of casks. Spragge and his fleet watched this being done, for there was no wind, or, as he expressed it, we had “no opportunity of wind to do anything upon them.” On the 8th of May they noticed that the corsairs ashore were reinforced by the arrival of horse-as well as foot-soldiers, which the Englishmen suspected rightly had come from Algiers. The Bougie corsairs greeted this arrival with wild cheering and by firing of the guns in their ships and castles, as well as by the display of colours.

About noon, just as Spragge was anxious to reopen operations, he was harassed by a flat calm. Luckily, however, at 2 p.m. a nice breeze sprang up, and the Revenge, Dragon, Advice and Mary advanced and let go in 3½ fathoms nearer in, mooring stem and stern so that their broadsides might face Bougie’s fortifications. The position was roughly thus. Looking towards Bougie, Spragge’s six ships were moored roughly in a half-circle in the following order from left to right. First came the Portsmouth, then the Garland, the Dragon, the Mary, the Advice and finally the Revenge flagship. These were all, so to speak, in the foreground of the picture. In the background were the enemy’s ships on the left, whilst on the right were the castles and fortifications. In the middle distance on the left was the boom defence already noted. The Revenge was in 4 fathoms, being close up to the castles and walls, and the fight began. For two hours these ships bombarded Bougie’s ships and fortresses.

Spragge then decided to make a boat attack, his ships still remaining at anchor. He therefore sent away his pinnace, under the command of a man named Harman, “a Reformado seaman of mine.” A “reformado,” by the way, was a volunteer serving with the fleet without a commission yet with the rank of an officer. Harman was sent because Spragge’s second lieutenant had been hurt by a splinter in the leg. Lieutenant Pin was sent in command of the Mary’s boat, and Lieutenant Pierce had charge of the Dragon’s boat. The project was to cut the boom, and this was bravely done by these three boats, though not without some casualties. Eight of the Mary’s boat’s crew and her lieutenant were wounded with small shot. In the Admiral’s pinnace seven were killed outright, and all the rest were wounded excepting Harman. Of the Dragon’s boat’s crew ten were wounded as well as her lieutenant, and one was killed.

But the boom had been cut, and that was the essential point. That being done, the Admiral then signalled to his one remaining fireship, the little Victory, to do her work. She obeyed and got in so well through the boom that she brought up athwart the enemy’s “bolt-sprits, their ships being aground and fast to the castles.” The Victory burnt very well indeed, and destroyed all the enemy’s shipping, ten in all. Of these ten, seven were the best ships of the Algerine fleet, and of the three others one was a Genoese prize and the other had been a ship the pirates had captured from an English crew. The commander, the master’s mate, the gunner and one seaman of the fireship had been wounded badly in the fight, but the victory was complete and undoubted. On the 10th of May a Dutchman who had been captive with the corsairs for three years escaped by swimming off to the Revenge, and Spragge had him taken on board. The Dutchman informed the English Admiral that the enemy admitted that at least 360 Turkish soldiers had lost their lives in this engagement by fire and gunshot, as they could not get ashore from the ships. There were in all about 1900 men in addition to those 300 who came that morning from Algiers. The Dutchman, for himself, thought the losses far exceeded the number assessed by the enemy.

He stated that the castles and the town itself had been badly damaged, and as all their medicine-chests were on the ships and so burnt, it was impossible for the enemy to dress the wounds of their injured. “Old Treky, their Admiral, is likewise wounded,” wrote Spragge. Among the enemy’s killed was Dansker, a renegado, and our losses consisted only of 17 killed and 41 wounded.